At Tuesday night’s Stonehaven and District Community Council (SDCC) meeting, members heard from vice chair Phil Mills-Bishop that Stewart Milne had been in contact with SDCC regarding the changing of parts of the application.

Mr Mills-Bishop said: “In the last couple of days I received as Planning Secretary of SDCC two telephone calls and two e-mails from Brian Muir the Agent of Stewart Milne for the Mains of Cowie. The latest was just a few hours before the SDCC meeting last night informing me that he had now put the content of the latest e-mail to me to the Planning Officer dealing with the Application.

“Brian indicated to me that Stewart Milne would, as a permitted variation to their Planning Application, limit the number of houses to 250 as a “condition” of any approval and that even these would be phased over a number of years. The commitment to the other elements of the Application i.e, land for School, Community use of the old farm buildings, archaeological protection, and flood protection would remain at the same level as if there were the original asked for 400 houses.

“The SDCC position is that we await any response from the Planning Officer to us on making comment to what has been suggested. If this happens then, as [SDCC Chairperson] Knud outlined at the meeting, this will be discussed at the June SDCC meeting. However, as their are many other elements of objection, not just housing, the original objection is very likely to stand.”

A Pre-Determination hearing about the plans for a supermarket and 400 houses at Mains of Cowie took place at the end of April with the application due to go before the Kincardine and Mearns Area Committee next week and Full Council later this month.

The application for a mixed-use development, including residential dwellings, community and retail facilities, a primary school, petrol filling station and associated access routes and landscaping on land to the north, east and west of Mains of Cowie, Stonehaven, was submitted to Aberdeenshire Council in October 2014. This site has been the subject of Council deliberations before. It is not currently in the Local Plan and in 2014 was rejected by Abedeenshire Councillors after having originally been approved by local councillors. It is opposed by the Stonehaven Town Partnership and the Community Council, who submitted a very detailed objection last year.